


the end of all our exploring

by Anonymous



Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied past John Rider/Yassen Gregorovich, M/M, Retirement, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A year after the events at Point Blanc, Alex is still reluctantly working for MI6. A perilous mission and a strange conversation with an assassin make him reconsider his future.---Retirement fic. Set in the TV 'verse, with elements from the books. AU from the end of Eagle Strike.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider
Comments: 32
Kudos: 111
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

Alex woke up in a hospital bed, feeling as if his head had been stuffed full of cotton wool. It was a struggle to open his eyes. Everything hurt, in that dull way that meant he was drugged to the gills on powerful painkillers - a sensation he was becoming uncomfortably familiar with, with his rapidly accumulating number of hospital stays. His leg had the worst of the breakthrough pain. His arm was in a cast. The rest of his body was just one big ache.

After a few minutes of effort, he gave up on keeping his eyes open and lay back with a sigh. It was probably the drugs.

How the hell had he ended up here this time?

_Damian Cray was dead, vaporised into red dust by the force of the engine turbines. The plane had twisted off the runway and crashed onto its side. Kyra had managed in the nick of time to remotely disable the missile firing signal from her hideaway in the air traffic control tower. Now, it was all over, and the plane cabin was dark and filling with the smell of smoke. Distant sirens were ringing._

_And then there had been… Yassen. Crouched over Alex, pressing a thick wadded airplane blanket hard over the wound where Cray’s bullet had ripped through Alex’s leg instead of the more vital organs he’d been aiming for. It was soaked through with blood. Alex could only lay there against the wall, paralysed by shock and pain, breathing too fast. It was impossible to move his leg. He was certain his arm had been broken in the commotion when the plane went out of control. He had no idea what Yassen was trying to do but, any second now, Yassen would pick up his gun again and Alex would be dead. He was sure of it._

_“It isn’t deep,” Yassen said, so calmly he could’ve been discussing the weather. “Not an arterial bleed. No muscle damage. You’ll heal well.”_

_He tied a strip of the blanket tight around the mass of blood and wound and fabric - so tight that Alex was certain he blacked out for a second from pain - and took Alex’s uninjured arm to press his hand down hard against the makeshift bandage. Alex got the message. Keep pressure on the wound._

_And then Yassen stood up. Looked around the now-empty cabin. Then back down at Alex. Assessing._

_“Perhaps you should come with me,” he said consideringly._

_“...What?” Alex croaked. Was he going to be held hostage? But there was something different - softer - in Yassen’s eyes. Or maybe he was imagining it._

_“I am retiring. I suggest you retire too, before MI6 sends you into an early grave. Don’t follow in your father’s footsteps.”_

_“My father?” Alex’s heart jumped into his throat. His head spun. How could Yassen know his parents? He was a murderer for hire working for terrorists; how could he possibly --_

_The answer was suddenly obvious. Rage suddenly surged in him._

_“The plane crash was you, wasn’t it? You killed my parents! I never knew them and it was because of you!”_

_He struggled to sit up and shove Yassen away, ignoring the pain shooting through his broken arm - anything to get away from this murderer who’d killed his parents in cold blood, then killed his uncle too, and left Alex without any living family --_

_But Yassen simply pushed him gently back against the wall. Something had shifted in his mood that made Alex quickly silent. The plane cabin was quiet for a moment, as the fury dissipated from Alex’s chest as quickly as it’d risen. He’d never been able to read Yassen, but that expression on anybody else’s face… maybe he would’ve called it grief._

_“No,” Yassen said, firm but quiet, “I would never have done that to him.” He paused and seemed to hesitate for a moment, but continued, and Alex was his captive audience. “I knew him well, once. You are very much like him.”_

_The words only left Alex with more questions than answers. He had no idea what to think or what to say._

_Yassen must have seen his bewilderment and taken advantage. That was the only explanation he could think of, for Yassen to bring his hand up to Alex’s cheek and softly sweep his thumb across the corner of Alex’s mouth. His hand was warm, skin calloused from work Alex didn’t want to think about. It was almost a moment of tenderness, completely out of place in the chaos they found themselves in, under the urgent blinking of the emergency lights._

_Then the moment ended. Yassen took his hand away and spoke again. “You don’t belong in this kind of world, little Alex. Leave while you still can.”_

_Through the blur of pain and blood loss, Alex remembered what Yassen had told him once:_ Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no _. But he shook his head. He already knew it was impossible. MI6 knew everything about him, and would do anything to drag him back in. And there was Jack - he couldn’t leave Jack. No._

_Yassen sighed. “Consider it,” he said, then turned and walked away into the darkness and smoke of the cabin. Gone._

The creak of the hospital room door shook Alex out of his thoughts. A surge of adrenaline ran through him and he sprang to sit up - too quickly - ready to defend himself despite the room suddenly spinning around him.

Someone swooped into the room and a second later Alex found himself enveloped in a hug. It was Jack!

“You’re here!” he gasped, then sagged into her arms and pressed his face into her shoulder. He could feel Jack’s own stifled sobs shaking through her body. All of a sudden, he felt like a deflated balloon - all that fear and anger disappeared in an instant, replaced by an empty exhaustion.

They stayed like that for a long moment, before Jack finally extricated herself from the hug and dropped into the chair beside the bed.

“Alex… Thank god you’re alright,” she whispered as she reached up to brush his limp hair off his forehead. There were still tears in her eyes.

How many times had he put Jack through this? How many times had _MI6_ put her through this? Her world had been sent into a tailspin too, with the constant fear and anxiety eating into every other part of her life. To make things worse, she was far from the only friend of Alex’s who’d been hurt. Tom and Ayisha had gotten caught in the messy web that had become Alex’s life too, and placed in danger just by knowing him. MI6’s pet teen spy was even the inspiration behind Kyra’s recruitment by the CIA. Then there was everything else that had happened to Alex - kidnapping, torture, explosions, bombings, bullet wounds, broken limbs, and now even becoming a hostage in a hijacking of Air Force One… it was too much to think about.

Yassen’s words on the plane echoed in his mind. He’d been right. If Alex didn’t get out then this life would kill him. But there _was_ no way out.

Suddenly his face crumpled and before he knew it, he was crying too. Jack pulled him into another hug.

“It’s alright. You’re safe now. We’re going home.”

\---

It was actually a few more days before Alex made it home. The doctors had wanted to make sure he was healing up properly before they sent him off. But despite how thorough they otherwise were, they didn’t question what he was doing on the plane, nor what had led to his close brush with a bullet, or the broken arm, or the dozens of other injuries scattered across his body. He was sure someone at MI6 had come up with some very good reasons why they should keep quiet and look the other way. In fact, they didn’t even offer him a therapist, which at least one well-meaning staff member had always attempted the last few times he’d been in hospital. Perhaps MI6 just thought this particular mission wasn’t quite traumatic enough to warrant the suggestion. Or perhaps they were just sick of asking him.

It was a relief to get out of there. He couldn’t wait to have a long hot shower, wash off all the grime of the hospital stay, have a home-cooked meal and sleep in his own bed again. Just the thought of it brightened his mood. It was the most luxurious thing he could imagine.

He limped up the front steps with his single crutch while Jack held the door open for him, then made his way further into the house.

What he saw on the kitchen counter made him freeze.

It was a bulky A4 envelope with nothing on the front: no address, no stamps, no postmarks at all. It hadn't come through the post office. It was very deliberately placed in the centre of the table, impossible to ignore.

God, he wasn't being sent out on another mission already, was he? There was no way. His leg had hardly healed, still precariously held together by stitches. And he still had a broken arm, for god's sake.

But he knew as well as anybody that when MI6 called, there was no option but to answer.

Suddenly furious, he picked up the envelope and tore it open, ready to toss its contents straight in the bin.

What poured out instead made him gape. Passports. ID cards. Credit cards. Cash. Birth certificates, the paper perfectly aged to look exactly as old as the originals should.

And it wasn't just his face in the photos. There was a set for Jack too.

He pulled out the sheaf of paper that still clung to the inside of the envelope. There was more: school transcripts, bank statements, tax returns, even a signed and sealed university diploma declaring completion of a law degree.

There were the entire lives of two people in that envelope. Two people who looked an awful lot like Jack and Alex. With new names.

And then one more slip of paper, hidden at the very end of the stack of documents. A handwritten note.

_For your retirement._

Yassen. Alex recoiled as if he'd been stung and his crutch clattered to the floor.

"Alex! Are you alright?" Jack rushed into the room, then stopped short when she saw what Alex was staring at.

Alex jumped and quickly folded the note away, hiding it in his pocket. He turned to let Jack see the rest of the papers scattered across the kitchen counter.

"I - I don't understand," Jack stammered as she turned the documents in her hands, but it was clear she was figuring it out. This was a fresh start. For both of them. A new life wherever they wanted to go, out of reach of whatever shadowy figures existed who might want revenge or worse.

Maybe even out of reach of MI6, Alex thought.

"Where did all this come from?" Jack asked in amazement.

The lie jumped to Alex's lips immediately. "It must be MI6," he blurted out. "Mrs Jones met me at the hospital. She said I don't have to work for them any more. The Damian Cray scandal was too much. They're done with me."

The guilt of lying to Jack sat heavy in Alex's gut. A year ago, she would've been able to tell he was lying in an instant. Now, he'd gotten too good at it. But he couldn't tell her about Yassen - not yet. It was all too much.

He could see the hope bloom on Jack's face. "You mean… this is witness protection?"

"Yeah. I guess so."

They looked down at the papers across the table.

Jack spoke up first, with a nervous but wide smile. "So, the world is our oyster. Where do we want to go?"

\---

Two years later, Alex Fleming was cycling through the streets of Sydney with one last pizza to deliver. This address was a little out of his way, heading in the opposite direction from his sharehouse, and he was getting a little sweaty from the journey that night at the tail end of summer. But at least he had good company on the phone. Through Alex’s earbuds, Tom Harris laughed as he relayed the antics of their latest round of student elections.

“And you should read what Lachie wrote in his pamphlet bio! We _told_ him to proofread it, right, but you know what he’s like - anyway, he obviously didn’t, and he sent it off to the printers last-minute and you’ll never believe what it said…”

They were good friends, those two. As far as anybody knew, they only met by chance on campus a few weeks ago at Orientation, but it was like they’d known each other for years. But that was impossible, of course. Alex was a fresher who’d moved in from interstate, and Tom had only arrived from the UK last year as an international student, doing a completely different degree. They were the same age but Tom was already a year ahead; Alex had been held back a year at high school, because of something he didn’t like talking about much. It was understandable. But anyone could see they got along great.

“...Well, that’s how that meeting went. We’ll be getting plenty of feedback from the rest of the party, I bet,” Tom finished up just as Alex rounded the last corner towards his destination. His voice turned sly and teasing. “So how was your tute with whatshisname, that guy you were complaining about last time? Still cute? Still pulling your pigtails?”

Alex felt his face heat instantly and he was just about ready to gear up into a rant, when something down the road caught his eye.

His heart dropped into his stomach.

“I, uh - Hang on. Something just came up. I’ll talk to you later.” He ended the call and pulled his earbuds out, shoving them into his pocket. He already knew he’d never hear the end of it from Tom when he called back. But this was important.

There was someone sitting in a parked car outside the house he was supposed to be delivering to. A man maybe in his late thirties, handsome, with piercing eyes and dark hair cropped short - and a long jagged scar down the side of his face.

He didn’t know what Yassen was doing here, but in his experience, it was hardly ever good news, generously-provided new identities notwithstanding. The last time he saw Yassen, after Jack and Alex’s new paperwork had mysteriously shown up on their kitchen table, it was on a school trip to Canberra. He’d seen Yassen from the other side of a cafe they’d stopped at for lunch and chased him down - too easily, he thought in retrospect, meaning Yassen had planned the whole thing. They’d had an awful, awkward (for Alex, anyway; Yassen was perfectly poised as always) conversation about whether Yassen was there to kill anybody and then what the hell Alex was doing, compromising his new identity by chasing down some assassin he used to know.

Of course, Alex earned himself a detention when he finally wandered back to his school group. And Yassen hadn’t told the whole truth about what he was doing there either, which Alex learnt when the news of a massive government data breach hit the airwaves the very next morning. At least it was true nobody died.

It had been strange. Yassen had been… fond, almost friendly. Certainly not murderous. In fact, when Alex thought about it, Yassen had never been especially murderous towards him. He’d saved his life in the Air Force One crash. And then afterwards, Yassen had even helped him and Jack get away from MI6, even if it meant giving up what was left of their old lives and rebuilding from scratch somewhere new. Yassen had never asked for repayment either. But why? It didn’t fit with everything else Alex knew about him. Professional killers didn’t seem the type to be nice for no good reason.

It had occurred to Alex one day that Alex had begun to trust him. Sort of. Maybe just a little bit. The idea had sat uncomfortably in his mind ever since.

Well, he’d be more cautious this time. It was never smart to trust someone like Yassen, after all. He brought his bike to a slow crawl and meandered closer to the car.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed as Yassen rolled down the window closest to him. “And how did you find me?”

“I was in the area. Thought I’d visit an old acquaintance and see how he might be doing,” Yassen said with the hint of a smile. Obviously toying with him. “You should stop using that delivery app, by the way. It’s very easy to find you.”

“I thought nobody was supposed to be looking any more,” Alex said, with just a touch of snippiness. “Anyway, I’m working. I’m on the clock. My boss will notice if I disappear, you know.”

“Yes,” Yassen nodded. “That pizza’s mine.” He sounded deceptively casual. “Now come, sit down. We should talk. Catch up like old friends.”

Alex gaped at him. _Of course_ it was. Why was he surprised? Trust Yassen to track him down and manipulate him into a meeting in such a convoluted, roundabout way. But the gape quickly turned into a glare.

“If you just wanted to talk to me, you didn’t have to make me ride all this way,” Alex muttered as he unzipped the insulated bag on the back of his bike and handed the pizza over through the open window. If Yassen dropped it all over his nice car then it served him right. But of course, Yassen was as steady as ever. He balanced the box on his lap, opened the lid to glance at the pizza inside - medium size, a Supreme with pepperoni, capsicum, mushrooms and olives. Too many veggies for Alex’s tastes, but he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Yassen had ordered it. It was probably the healthiest thing on their menu. Yassen seemed like the kind of man who looked after himself, despite his dangerous choice of occupation. Always in peak condition, even in retirement. Kept himself fit. Probably even went to the gym now like everybody else. The image of Yassen in a singlet and sweatpants, sweating with exertion and breathing hard, briefly flashed through Alex’s mind and he flushed red. That line of thought was quickly stopped in its tracks.

Yassen looked up from the pizza back to Alex. “Well? Get in the car.”

“I shouldn’t. I need to get back… you know, home. It’s a while away.” He could hear his voice wavering and felt a bit embarrassed. It wasn’t like him to be nervous. He waved vaguely in the direction of his house, a pretty decent place a few blocks away from uni, shared with three other flatmates. He hadn’t been lying; it really was a fairly long way. And he wasn’t really sure about being stuck in a car with Yassen. He didn’t think Yassen was here to hurt him, but the thought still made him feel funny.

“That’s fine. I’ll drive you back.”

“I’ve got my bike.”

“I’ll drop it off for you later.”

Alex fidgeted on his bike, trying to scramble for another excuse, then sighed. Clearly he wasn’t going to escape this, whatever it was. He pulled his phone out, clocked out and shut off the app, then shoved it back in his pocket. Yassen probably would’ve preferred it if he’d turned the whole phone off and took out the battery for good measure, but Alex had left that life behind - at his advice, no less - and wasn’t going to bother.

He walked his bike over to the racks by the footpath and locked it there, then opened the car door and flopped down into the seat. Why did he feel like he’d been called to the principal’s office?

“That’s quite an old bike.”

Alex wrinkled his nose. That wasn’t where he expected the conversation to start. “It’s fine. It gets me where I need to go.”

Yassen was right that it was old, though. He’d bought it secondhand and had to repair it himself at the free bike clinic on campus. The seat clamp was rusted shut and the chain had a tendency to fall off at the worst moments. But it worked alright and the chain was easy enough to fix, so it wasn’t really a big deal.

Alex crossed his arms and waited for Yassen to keep talking, but Yassen just took a slice of the pizza, then offered the box to him.

“You’re really gonna eat it?” Alex asked, surprised.

“Why not? I did buy it.”

“What if it’s poisoned?”

Yassen had a secretive half-smile like he was amused at some private joke, but didn’t answer. Alex squirmed and focused on his own slice of the pizza. Even if it wasn’t quite his favourite choice of toppings, pizza was pizza, and he was actually pretty damn hungry now that he thought about it.

It was utterly bizarre to watch Yassen eating pizza like a normal person, like seeing the Queen have a beer at the pub. He knew theoretically that Yassen was a master of disguise and knew how to blend in in any situation, and theoretically that even the world’s best assassins still needed to do ordinary things like eat, but this was… just too weird.

Yassen caught him watching and Alex slid his eyes away quickly.

“So what did you want to talk about? I know you’re not really here just to catch up,” Alex asked between chews.

“You’ve been careless, little Alex. I didn’t give you those papers only for you to lose your cover again so quickly.”

Alex’s head whipped around to look at Yassen. “What? Did we get found out?”

Yassen hummed, apparently oblivious to Alex’s sudden wave of panic. “Not yet. But I see you’ve been getting nosy. Poking around, looking for things you shouldn’t. And your friend Tom…”

“That’s not fair!” Alex yelped defensively. “Tom’s my best friend. You have no idea how hard it was, just cutting off contact like that and dropping off the face of the planet. He had no idea what happened. And anyway, we’ve been careful since we started talking again. He knows it’s important. Everyone thinks we just met at uni, no one knows anything --”

“Alright,” Yassen cut him off. He looked Alex up and down, then raised an eyebrow. Alex could feel himself being judged. Assassins, even retired ones, probably didn’t have anything like ‘best friends’, Alex thought bitterly. They were all efficiency. They’d never be compromised by something as soft as that. “And your other work?”

“That was -- I just --” This time the words didn’t come so easily.

He knew he’d been reckless. Last week he broke into the office of an engineering professor whose name he’d found uncensored on a cybersecurity paper that had been distantly linked to the Five Eyes agencies. He’d thought she might have had remote access to MI6’s databases. It was a long shot, he knew. But from what Yassen said, Alex was certain his father had had something to do with MI6 too, and in a moment of weakness he’d been so desperate to find out something - _anything_ \- about John Rider that he knew he had to take that chance.

But it didn’t result in anything. Her computer was completely locked down, far beyond Alex’s technological capabilities to break into, and then a security guard had fiercely yanked him out of the building and dumped him out onto the street. It was only through some miracle that Alex had been able to pass himself off as a very lost, very innocent first-year and get away without being reported.

So it had been a waste of time. He’d risked everything he and Jack had rebuilt in their new lives, and he still knew practically nothing about his parents.

“I just wanted to know about my dad,” he finally said, voice quiet. He crossed his arms across his chest and stared out the passenger side window, not wanting to meet Yassen’s eyes.

They were quiet for another long moment, until Yassen seemed to take pity. He put the pizza box on the back seat, out of the way, then turned to Alex, looking serious.

“I know it’s difficult. But you won’t achieve anything this way except getting yourself caught. Your father may be dead but these organisations won’t leave his information lying around for anybody to find.”

Alex let out of a puff of air, frustrated. He knew that already. It wasn’t like he’d just googled ‘John Rider’ or whatever. He’d tried to do better than that. But it didn’t matter anyway - he didn’t get anywhere.

Yassen continued. “And you have a new life now. You are a university student, a young adult with a bright future. You escaped a dangerous past, which very few manage to do. It may be best if you let some things remain unknown. It would certainly keep you safer.”

Alex shook his head. “You know I can’t. This is my dad we’re talking about. Maybe my mum too. Can’t you understand why I can’t let it go?”

Then something occurred to him. “Look, you know I won’t stop looking but you don’t want me investigating on my own. Why can’t _you_ tell me, then? You obviously know something.”

It was Yassen’s turn to be frustrated. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed out slowly. Absurdly, it made Alex smile. He looked so ordinary like that, annoyed at a bratty kid who kept asking questions. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that this was the same coldblooded killer who’d taken so many lives - Ian foremost in his mind among them. Alex shook himself out of the moment. He could never forget that Yassen was Ian’s murderer.

Yassen draped his hands over the steering wheel and stared out at the open road ahead of them, though the car wasn’t moving. His voice was as calm as if he was reading out of the phone book. “Your father worked for MI6.”

Alex’s heart thudded in his chest. He’d suspected it already, but it was something else to hear the words from Yassen’s mouth.

“MI6 sent him undercover to be recruited by a criminal organisation. He built a reputation for himself there, and became known as one of their very best. I met him when I was nineteen.” Here, Yassen paused and looked at him. “The same age that you are now.”

Alex froze and stayed silent, feeling a little like a deer in headlights, not wanting to do anything that might make Yassen clam up again. He took the information in word by word, carefully committing it all to memory.

Yassen broke their eye contact and turned his gaze back towards the unmoving road. “Some months later, MI6 brought their agent back from the field. They made it look like they’d captured him. Then they used him in a hostage exchange and faked his death. I assume he went home to his family after that.”

 _What?_ Alex struggled to keep up. There was so much he wanted to ask, but Yassen never gave him a chance to interrupt. He spoke with the same strict efficiency Alex had seen him use on missions.

“Of course, the organisation discovered the ruse. And you know how that story ends.”

“The plane crash,” Alex breathed. His mother had been there too. And he nearly had been as well. “So it really wasn’t an accident.”

Yassen didn’t answer that - he didn’t need to.

He let the silence sit for a moment while Alex processed the news, then started the car and began to leave the curb. “Alright. I think that is all you need to know, Alex. Now you can stop looking and go back to your life.”

“Wait!” Alex could sense Yassen closing off again and scrambled for the chance to learn more before it disappeared. “You can’t just stop there. Where did MI6 send him? What organisation was it? Were you working together? How did you meet?”

“That’s dangerous information, Alex. Much more than you need to know.”

“Fine. If you don’t want to tell me about your super secret missions, then don’t,” Alex retorted, helplessly angry, “Since I’m such a security risk and everything.”

Yassen only shrugged. “You are.”

Alex slumped in his seat and watched the scenery zip by for a few moments, biting his nails.

Yassen had once again flipped his whole world around within the space of a few words. He felt overwhelmed with information now. His father had been a spy. And he’d gone undercover and somehow been so good at it that actual criminals thought he was one of the best. Was he a killer like Yassen? No, that had to be impossible… right? Alex wasn’t under any illusions that MI6 was any model of morality, but surely they wouldn’t make his father do that.

The worst of it was that although he knew so much more, he still couldn’t imagine who his parents really were. Ian hadn’t talked about them much - maybe it was too painful. All he had of them was old photographs. And now, he supposed, he could label them both with their careers too. He already knew his mother was a nurse. Now he knew his father had been in MI6. He knew how they died. But beyond that, they were still a mystery.

Alex glanced at Yassen, trying to figure out how far he could push. Yassen had seemed more human for a while before, but now he was like a marble statue again, cold and unyielding.

“Can I ask you something else?” Alex piped up again, though more hesitant now.

“That depends on what you’re asking.”

“What was my dad like? In real life, I mean. You said you knew him pretty well, didn’t you?”

Yassen was quiet for so long that Alex was about to give up waiting for an answer. But then he spoke.

“He saved my life once. I cared deeply about him. But no, I don’t think I knew him well at all.”

Alex didn’t know what to say to that.

He still remembered what Yassen had said to him, back on Air Force One when he’d had a broken arm and a gunshot wound. Something must have changed since then. But it didn’t make any sense for anything to change; his father had already been dead for nearly twenty years.

He burned with even more questions but none of them felt like the right thing to ask. Where would he even start? Besides, Yassen’s face said he was well and truly done speaking now.

The rest of the journey passed in silence, until Yassen pulled up outside Alex’s house. It was late but the lights were still on and he could hear the bass thump of music from inside. Back to reality. Alex took a deep breath and tried to shake himself out of his strange mood.

He’d just opened the door to step out when Yassen said one last thing. “Look after yourself, Alex. Try not to get into any more trouble.”

It wasn’t a threat so much as a request. Alex bit his lip and nodded, then walked up the steps to his front door. Behind him, the car drove off. Alex doubted he would ever see it again.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, after a sleepless night of tossing and turning, Alex woke up to find a bicycle in his usual spot, locked with his old bike lock.

Not the old rusty one he remembered. A very shiny, very new endurance-style road bike, with a lightweight carbon wire frame, the latest disc brake designs and a sharp-looking set of gears. 

Alex could only stare at it. 

Suddenly, he had the urge to sweep it for trackers and bugs. But that wasn’t his life any more. If somebody wanted to follow him from uni to work and back every day, then let them.

It wasn’t a mystery where the bike had come from. The mystery was _why._ After their conversation last night, Alex had expected Yassen to simply disappear into the ether again. He definitely hadn’t expected Yassen to keep his promise to return a kid’s rusty old bike - a kid who was generally an annoyance at best and an unaffordable loose end at worst. Alex’s assumption had been so strong that he’d actually already planned on taking an hour out in the afternoon to walk back and pick it up himself. 

This random act of generosity was the last thing he expected. He felt so spoiled. He could feel the pink rising to his cheeks. And he felt oddly rattled, thinking of Yassen being the one to do this. As if Alex didn’t feel uncomfortably indebted enough to him already... 

But Yassen himself had never done anything to make Alex feel like a debt was owed at all. 

Alex would never be able to understand him. 

He circled the bike as if it might bite, then reluctantly undid the lock and wheeled it out from the bike racks. With a twinge of embarrassment, he glanced up at the windows of the house to check that none of his flatmates had noticed it yet. Getting dropped off at home by someone mysterious in a nice car and then showing up the next day with an expensive new top-of-the-range bike was bound to earn him some comments. 

He sighed. Well, he could take a roasting as well as anybody. He’d just invent some story like he always did. And he really did appreciate the new bike. 

\---

Months later, it was the first weekend of the winter holidays. Alex hadn’t seen Yassen again and he told himself he didn’t care. He had been too busy to care. Studying, soccer training, extra shifts at the pizza parlour, the occasional house party - all of that was plenty to occupy his time. His last exam of the semester was well and truly done and dusted, and he'd triumphantly cleared out his desk full of scrawled notes and scrunched-up post-its the moment he got home from the exam hall. And now he had his reward: the student society's annual ski trip that he'd painstakingly saved up for for weeks.

He hadn’t been snowboarding since… since before Ian died. Escaping a Nazi boarding school on an ironing board didn’t count. He didn’t realise how much he’d missed it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had so much fun. Feeling like he was practically flying down the slopes, taking jumps off ramps of packed snow, even the less-than-elegant moments he lost an edge and flopped face first into the icy cold. 

They’d started the day early despite all their light hangovers from the welcome party the night before, and the sun was already high overhead. He was puffed out and his legs burned, and he was very ready for lunch. He wasn’t the only one. Tom’s stomach had grumbled so loudly on the lift up the mountain that their whole group had practically collapsed with laughter. But first, one more run.

Alex clipped his board to his feet and hopped over the top of the slope, starting his way down. The snow was perfect, and he picked up speed fast.

Some spark of daring reared its head and he pushed himself to go even faster, taking the curves at sharp edges and spraying up snow. A grin tugged at his lips. It was exhilarating. The trees at the edge of the run zoomed by so fast he almost couldn’t see them.

Then -- a tiny blur of light brown ran across the track.

“Jesus!” Alex swore. He swerved to avoid the rabbit that had taken a death-wish dive into his path. Too fast. He veered off to the side, almost into the trees, and felt his board clip something in the snow. It sent him tumbling, completely topsy turvy, until finally he landed flat on his back, much further down the hill than where he started.

“Ugh…” he groaned as he slowly sat up, undoing the straps on his board. That was going to bruise. He could see the rest of the group making their way down to him now, calling out. Worried about him. He waved to them, then set about reorienting himself.

Tom reached him first, holding out a hand to help him up. “Jeez, what happened back there? You completely wiped out!”

“It was just a rabbit. Ran straight out of the trees and onto the track. I didn’t want to turn it into mush,” Alex said. He wiped the snow from the side of his head.

“Holy shit!” Another boy, Ryan, grabbed his arm and Alex looked down - it was blood! He was so cold he hadn’t even felt it. He took off his helmet and gloves to prod at his head, trying to find the source. It felt like there was a gash just above the back of his ear. He looked around at the snow around him and saw the likely culprit, some kind of metallic-looking box with a corner sticking out of the snow. It looked familiar. Ski slope machinery or something, he guessed.

“We’ve gotta call someone to get you back to the resort,” Diana piped up, looking a little pale at the sight of the blood. “They’ve got a clinic there with a doctor on call.”

Alex sighed. “Yeah, alright. I’ll meet you guys at lunch.” He pressed his palm to the cut and held it there, trying to avoid getting blood everywhere. What a mess. 

And that was how Alex found himself speeding away to the resort on the back of a snowmobile with a kind first-aider cleaning off the blood on his head, feeling a little pathetic and embarrassed by all the attention. 

Tom had wanted to join, but Alex had begged him off. He felt a pang of guilt remembering how Tom’s face had looked seeing the injury. Neither had forgotten all those times Alex had turned up to school or a movie night looking beaten up and under the weather. It was just a stupid accident this time, but the memories lingered.

The clinic at the resort was nice. It was hidden in a quiet corner of the building, near the resort management’s offices. It almost didn’t look like a clinic, all warm and cosy with an honest-to-god fireplace in the waiting room. The place was empty when they arrived, and the first-aiders parked Alex in a treatment bay with a pad of gauze while they went to call the doctor.

That was when Alex overheard a voice drifting in from an office down the hall.

“... worrying about it! We’ll get the money. We’re doing the blast today and the payout won’t take long after that. And you won’t have any problems…” The voice faded, then cut out when Alex heard a door shut.

He frowned. Something about what he’d heard didn’t sit right with him. His mind had already jumped to all kinds of conclusions. Someone in management worried about money was nothing suspicious, but profiting from a blast at a ski resort…

No. He was being paranoid. All his spying and all the eavesdropping skills that Ian had taught him had clearly messed his brain up. Whoever it was, they were probably talking about something completely innocent - avalanche control or whatever. And besides, surely nobody plotting anything nefarious would be stupid enough to talk about it at that volume without even shutting the office door. 

The doctor arrived not long after that, and had a look at his head. The cut wasn’t deep, despite the dramatic bleeding, and all it took was a bit of skin glue to seal it off. She asked him a few questions, shone a torch in his eyes, and then Alex was done.

“Looks like you’re fine. Just a nasty cut.” She cleaned up the wound kit and looked over Alex one more time. “Any other injuries anywhere else from the fall?”

Alex flexed his shoulders and wriggled his legs. “I feel fine. Maybe a few bumps and bruises in the morning.”

The doctor nodded, apparently satisfied.. “Alright. Well, try not to touch the glue for another 24 hours, and keep the area as dry as you can for the rest of the week. That means no washing your hair -” Alex made a face at that, not excited about the prospect of greasy hair “- and come back or see your GP if it starts bleeding again or looks irritated. Now, are you alright to head out on your own?”

“Yeah. I’m meeting my friends in the cafeteria.”

“That’s great.” She stood up and turned slightly towards the door, and he got the hint.

He had no intention of leaving the building yet, though. That uncomfortable gut feeling hadn’t left him since he overheard that conversation, and if MI6 had taught him one thing, it was not to ignore a gut feeling. 

He shut the door quietly behind himself and glanced down the hallway where the offices were located. He’d heard footsteps leaving while the doctor was examining him, and the hallway was quiet now. After a glance around to check he was alone, he headed for the last door down the end of the hall.

Locked, of course. But when had that ever stopped him?

He picked the lock easily and sprang into action as soon as he got in. The desk was covered in messy piles of papers. Receipts, invoices, lists of membership accounts… and buried at the bottom in a manila envelope was a new insurance policy certificate, dated to last week. Alex studied it carefully. Then he moved on to the computer. Still logged in, luckily for him.

He was scrolling through the email inbox, filled with debt notices and messages left by frazzled assistants, when suddenly there were footsteps clomping down the hallway towards him.

Shit! Alex looked around. The storage closet. He pulled it open and crammed himself in next to the photocopier and shelves stacked to the brim with archival boxes.

Through the crack in the door, he saw a stocky man in a suit walk in and sit down heavily in the office chair with a sigh. He was holding something that looked like a garage remote.

No, not a garage remote. Alex could suddenly hear his blood thudding in his ears. A detonator.

It all made sense. That was why the box he’d knocked into on the mountains had looked familiar. Explosives. Maybe stolen from a construction site or bought somewhere shady. Easily wired up with radio parts. Simple to operate. Then there were the insurance documents, the debt notices...

The man looked at the device in his hand for a moment, contemplative. Then he moved his thumb over one of the buttons and --

“No!” Alex leaped out of the storage closet and slammed himself against the side of the chair, knocking the man to the ground and sending the remote flying. 

“What the fuck?!” the man shouted, trying to throw Alex off his back. But Alex was trained for this. He got the man in a headlock and squeezed. Within seconds, the man had stopped struggling and was unconscious on the carpet.

Alex picked up the detonator. There was a battery panel on the back and he wedged it open, emptying out the contents. Then he dropped it back on the floor and broke it sharply with the heel of his boot. 

He went to the fire alarm next. A simple crack of the glass and the deafeningly loud blare of the evacuation alert began sounding from every speaker in the resort. That would get everyone out and hopefully to safety even if the detonator had a backup system. 

Then, he ran.

\---

Alex woke up the next morning back at home. The ski trip had been understandably cut short, and the group had packed up the cabin in a rush to make the drive back to the city. 

It was a dramatic story. The resort owner had been arrested last night, after fire services arrived to turn off the alarm and discovered the bombs. Then they’d shut down the whole place to finish sweeping it for any other undetonated explosives hidden in the mountains. It was all over the news and it had been all they could talk about at dinner, but Alex went to bed early to avoid most of the conversation.

He didn’t know how he always ended up in these situations. Was he just a magnet for trouble?

He wandered downstairs to the kitchen and started up the kettle, put a few slices of toast in the toaster, and poured a bowl of cereal. Nobody else was in the house any more - they’d all either gone home for the winter break or jetted off to holidays elsewhere. The sun was bright through the curtains, though Alex couldn’t enjoy it much. He was still half-asleep and melancholy about the direction his weekend had suddenly swerved. 

A figure stepped out of the shadows. Alex spun around instantly, brandishing a butter knife.

It was Yassen.

Alex stared at him open-mouthed, wondering for a second if he was hallucinating, then slowly put the knife back down on the counter. He silently congratulated himself for not jumping out of his skin and doing something embarrassing like dropping his breakfast.

“And what exactly were you planning to do with that?” Yassen asked, amused, the slightest smile on his lips. 

Alex folded his arms and didn’t answer the question. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.” 

He’d spent the last few months trying to process that idea. He thought he should’ve been relieved that Yassen had disappeared from his life again like the rest of the shadowy world of spies and mercenaries he’d left behind. But Yassen was the last tenuous link Alex had with any history of his family. As much as he hated to admit it, Yassen had been right about Alex’s poking around leading nowhere helpful. With Yassen gone, Alex faced the prospect of the rest of his life being full of questions but nowhere to find answers. 

At first, he’d held out hope that Yassen would pop up again somewhere he least expected it. Their post-retirement brushes with each other had given Alex the impression that Yassen was quite satisfied with simply flitting in and out of his life on a whim, leaving him disoriented and reeling but always in some sense better off than he had been. Like some kind of bizarre ex-assassin fairy godmother. Surely, he thought, he’d unknowingly put some foot out of line or do something else that pinged on Yassen’s inexplicable radar, and they would meet again. But as the weeks passed, that hope faded. 

Well, it seemed Alex should have had more faith. Here he was, obviously having pinged the radar, with Yassen right in front of him like magic.

“I heard about the arrest at the ski resort yesterday,” Yassen said. He stepped closer to Alex until they were barely a foot apart, and Alex didn’t move away.

“Are you here to tell me off for sticking my nose into it?” Alex asked, preemptively belligerent. “I only found out by accident, and I couldn’t ignore it. People could’ve died.” Last time, maybe it had made sense for Yassen to tell him to stop snooping. But this was different! This had been lives at risk. Alex didn’t want to consider what might’ve happened if he hadn’t put the pieces together, if he hadn’t stopped the resort owner from blowing the place up for insurance money, if his friends had still been up that mountain...

“No. I came to see if you were alright.”

“Oh.” Alex’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t expected that answer. 

Yassen brought his hand up to Alex’s chin, telegraphing the movement, and tilted his face to the side to look at the glued-up cut behind his ear. “What happened here?” he asked, voice soft, with a note of danger that made Alex repress a shiver. 

“Snowboarding accident. Nothing to do with the bomb stuff.”

“Hmm.” 

He let Alex go and took a step back. Alex let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Yassen was still quite close, scrutinising the cut with a pensive frown, and Alex almost felt like he could feel the warmth radiating from him. His skin tingled where Yassen had held his face. He wondered if he should be feeling scared, or creeped out, or maybe even angry, that Yassen had mysteriously shown up at his house while he was alone, just to… what? Check on him? But he couldn’t summon the feeling. Instead there was a strange kind of comfort in seeing Yassen again, a man who’d ruined and saved his life in equal measure and haunted his dreams for any number of very different reasons.

“Um, thanks for the new bike, by the way. You didn’t have to do that,” Alex said, feeling self-conscious. 

“You’re welcome.” The corners of Yassen’s lips twitched upwards. Alex was sure this was the most he’d ever seen Yassen smile in one visit. “I’m not used to seeing you so polite. Are you sure you’re feeling well?”

Alex pouted before he could stop himself, offended. “I am polite! And I’m fine.” 

But if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t feeling completely well. He was tired but restless all at once. Last night’s conversation had left him off-kilter and feeling at a distance from everyone. He hadn’t told anybody what he’d done - not even Tom, who knew practically everything else. He didn’t have the energy. It was fine with him if all they knew was that a fire alarm had mysteriously gone off before they met up with Alex again at the evacuation point. They wouldn’t understand and Alex didn’t want them looking at him differently. And the last thing he wanted was to be pushed into making a police report and drawing attention.

Yassen looked at him like he could read his thoughts, which made Alex squirm. Why did Yassen always have that effect on him? Things were easier when they were firmly on opposite sides. Now it was… complicated.

The kettle flicked off behind them as the water came to a boil. Alex stepped aside, wriggling out from under Yassen’s gaze, and busied himself with getting his breakfast together.

“How did you know I was there at the resort anyway?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he turned back towards Yassen, “Keeping tabs on me?”

“You have quite the tendency to show up at newsworthy events.”

God, wasn’t that true. Alex sighed. He set his food on the kitchen counter and scrubbed his hands over his face. 

“You’re unhappy,” Yassen stated plainly, quietly. There was a flash of something like guilt almost too quick for Alex to catch - almost.

“That’s not true,” Alex shook his head. The last thing he wanted was for Yassen to think he was _ungrateful_ for the new life he’d been given. If nothing else, at least Jack had gotten out - she was so much happier now, in her new job with new friends and a new partner who adored her. She was even back in contact with her family in the US, carefully and covertly but enough. Alex would never regret that, no matter what happened to him. The idea that Yassen was perhaps partly responsible for how Alex’s old life imploded in the first place somehow never entered his mind. “I _am_ happy. I love it here. I don’t wish I stayed in London or with MI6 or anything like that. It’s just…”

Why was he telling Yassen all this? He shut his mouth and glared down at his cereal. “Never mind. You don’t want to hear my whining.”

“If I didn’t want to speak to you, then I wouldn’t be here.”

Ouch. Blunt but fair enough. Alex couldn’t stop the grimace that crossed his face. 

Yassen spoke again, a touch gentler this time. “When I suggested your retirement from MI6, it wasn’t with the intention of making you suffer further. I don’t wish to see you unhappy.”

“Why would you care if I’m happy or not?” The words slipped out before he could catch himself, and he wished he could take them back immediately. A cold-blooded professional killer was not the kind of person he wanted to piss off.

Yassen seemed to consider the question seriously, though. He shifted to lean against the doorframe, the movement smooth and elegant. “Perhaps as a debt to your father.”

Alex’s insides twisted at the mention of his parents. His father had saved Yassen’s life once…

“But you killed my uncle.”

“He made his own choices. He worked for MI6 of his own free will.”

“And that makes it okay? What if I decided to go back to them now? Would you kill me too if somebody offered the right money, then?”

Yassen’s face was carefully blank. “It’s fortunate we’ll never have to find out, given we have both retired now.”

They both knew that wasn’t an answer. Alex sagged against the kitchen counter and turned away to glare out the window.

Eventually he broke the silence first. Yassen seemed to have infinite patience but Alex had never been good with quiet. “It’s just, I don’t really belong here. Ordinary school, hanging out at house parties, ski trips for rich kids. I’m not saying they’ve all had easy lives, but they…”

Alex didn’t know how to end that sentence. Haven’t been coerced into becoming secret agents for the government? Haven’t been tortured by neo-Nazi school teachers trying to take over the world? Haven’t been shot trying to stop a plane hijacking that would start a global nuclear war? Haven’t seen people killed in cold blood for money and politics right in front of their eyes…?

“I just want to go back to normal, be a normal person again. Isn’t that why I’m here instead of at MI6? But then things like this happen, and… well, maybe I’m just not and I can’t ever be.”

There, he’d said it. The thought that had been floating around the edges of his mind, rattling around his brain in dark quiet moments. Maybe he was already too broken to be anything but MI6’s puppet any more.

He didn’t look back up at Yassen’s face. Just turned his gaze down to his own hands, crossed in front of his chest. 

“I have seen broken people and you are not one of them. At least, not yet,” Yassen said, as if reading Alex’s mind.

Alex shivered at the images that flickered unpleasantly through his mind. Trust Yassen to drop that kind of truth bomb on him so casually. He could feel the chasm in life experiences opening up between them, the sorts of things he knew Yassen had likely seen and gone through and probably even caused. 

He heard Yassen take a step and the next thing he felt was Yassen’s hands on either side of his face, tilting his head up at just the slightest angle. He should have frozen up, stepped away, maybe fought back - Yassen was dangerous, a killer, someone Alex should _hate_ \- but --- 

He didn’t. He just met Yassen’s eyes and let Yassen hold him there.

Yassen brushed a thumb over his cheekbone. “You’re still young, Alex. And you’re adaptable. No matter what the future holds for you, even if it won’t be easy, you’ll find a way through. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and in more dire circumstances than this too.”

Alex’s breath stuttered in his throat.

Then the moment broke. Yassen stepped away and he looked as distant and cold as he’d ever been, as if the last few seconds had never happened. In an instant, that warm honesty and comfort was gone, and Alex felt a chill run through his spine.

“I should go. I’ve already been here too long.”

Alex watched, stunned, as Yassen already seemed to be disappearing right before his eyes. Finally he came to his senses and dashed out to catch Yassen’s sleeve before he could open the front door and truly vanish from Alex’s life for good - something that suddenly Alex dreaded. “Wait!”

Alex’s hand never touched Yassen, of course. He slid gracefully out of Alex’s reach without a second thought. But he did pause and look back at Alex with a hint of surprise.

Alex’s tongue was a dead weight in his mouth. He had to take a second to gather his wits. “Am I ever going to see you again?”

Yassen raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to?”

“I mean…” Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s not like I’ve got your email. A phone number? Bat signal?”

He could feel heat rising to his face. He was being an awkward, clingy berk now, asking for Yassen’s number like he was trying to pull at a bar. For all he knew, Yassen would be glad not to see him again. But he didn’t want to let go.

Yassen’s mouth twitched into a smile and Alex was flooded with relief. 

“In one month. Redfern station. I’ll find you.”

Alex nodded, ignoring the inexplicable flutter in his stomach. Yassen held his eye for another second, searching for something Alex didn’t know, and then the door shut behind him.

Alone again, Alex leaned on the wall and let out a very long breath.

What in the world had he been thinking?


	3. Chapter 3

The next four weeks flew by. Before Alex knew it, his meeting with Yassen was edging closer by the day and he found himself spending every evening waiting for his train home with jittery anticipation, nerves buzzing as he searched for that familiar face. Yassen hadn’t exactly been specific with the date or time, which Alex cursed himself for not asking about earlier. 

His nerves didn’t go unnoticed. One late afternoon on the walk to the station, Tom stopped him in his tracks and pinned him with a beady eye. 

“Alright, Alex. You’ve gotta tell me now. What the hell’s going on?” he demanded, arms crossed as he stood directly in Alex’s path.

Alex gaped at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’re still an utterly horrendous liar, you know that? You know what I’m talking about. You’ve been a ball of stress all week, you’re avoiding us, and you look like you’re expecting someone to jump out at you any minute,” Tom went on, undeterred. Then his voice lowered to a hushed whisper. “If you’ve been found out, or if _they’re_ bothering you again, or if you’re about to disappear off the face of the planet without a word again…”

“What? No!” Alex felt pale at the mere thought. Instantly, he felt a wave of guilt wash over him for making Tom consider those were ever possibilities. 

“Well, what is it, then?”

He sighed and buried his face in his hands. How was he supposed to answer that? “I’m just… meeting up with someone this week. Nobody bad. Um… a friend.”

“A friend,” Tom repeated flatly, obviously unbelieving. 

Alex tried not to squirm. “Yeah, a friend.” 

Was Yassen a ‘friend’? The idea made Alex’s chest clench for reasons he couldn’t completely identify. He pushed the thought aside - it didn’t matter, it was just something he said to get Tom off his back. But the conflict must have shown on his face, because Tom only looked at him for a second, clearly calculating _something_ , before his eyes suddenly turned sharp and he broke into a sneaky grin. 

“Oh, _that_ kind of friend, huh?” He laughed and threw his arm over Alex’s shoulders, pulling him into a clumsy half-headlock half-hug. “The hot, snuggly, warm and fuzzy, third-base kind of friend? No wonder you’ve been nervous!”

Alex’s stomach suddenly twisted sharply at the mental image and his own laugh came out more than a little hysterical. “No! Just a friend, jesus christ, Tom!”

But Tom had gotten his hooks in and wasn’t going to let go. “I can’t _believe_ you haven’t been telling me! Come on, who’s this mysterious hot date you’ve got coming up? Someone off Tinder? It’s not that guy from the tute you’ve been grouching about, is it? Or is it Jess again? I always thought you spent too much time in that study group, you sly dog.”

“God, you are unbelievable!” Alex’s laughter was genuine now and his face had gone bright red. He wormed out from under Tom’s arm and threatened to push him into the muddy gutter, and Tom playfully shoved him back, until they were jostling the whole way to the station between fits of giggles.

Alex didn’t see Yassen that night, again. But after he and Tom went their separate ways, his thoughts wouldn’t stop spinning for the rest of the journey home.

\---

By Friday night, Alex was beginning to wonder if Yassen would show up at all. He’d been at the station for ages now, long after the last of the other commuters had headed off and the only new arrivals were those starting their weekend out.

He felt immensely stupid for being so hopeful and - if he was honest - excited about meeting again. He didn’t even know why he had been looking forward to it so much. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if Yassen had just been brushing him off and keeping him out of the way by promising some nebulous future meeting. Making future plans was immensely out of character for Yassen - or at least, for what Alex knew about Yassen, which he was quickly realising was almost nothing at all. Yassen only showed up in his life every now and then to drop bombshells and odd gifts before disappearing again. 

He rolled a pebble around under his shoe and chewed his lip.

Tom’s jokes about Alex dating had been fun at the time but sat heavy in his gut afterwards. He’d… never let himself consciously think about it that way before. But now that the idea had been planted, he couldn’t shake it. He’d definitely noticed before that Yassen was… attractive. He wasn’t blind. Yassen had that cool calm and confidence, the air of strength and grace, and despite the modest, clean-cut way he dressed, he didn’t hide that he was… fit, underneath all the layers. And if Alex really, really dug down into his thoughts, he could admit that the quiet hidden threat of danger that simmered under the surface was… also… kind of...

No, no, no. He scrubbed his hand through his hair and shook his head, as if that would clear the thoughts out. No way. He was just overthinking. Tom had just accidentally gotten into his head. How could he forget who Yassen really was - a cold-hearted killer for hire who’d murdered his uncle? Shame and grief gripped him and he almost got up to leave the station right then and there.

But Yassen had saved Alex’s life, more than once. And underneath that freezing cold facade, there was some kind of humanity. He cared about Alex’s father. He cared about Alex too, Alex supposed, for reasons he couldn’t even begin to guess or understand but certainly wouldn’t take for granted.

It was complicated.

Alex let his head drop back onto the top of the bench and sighed heavily. This was a mess. He almost hoped Yassen wouldn’t show up that night, seeing him over-emotional and twisted up inside yet again. Alex had no doubt he would be able to read those thoughts like a book, and he felt embarrassed and ashamed at the thought of putting it all on show like that.

Of course, that was exactly when Yassen appeared.

“Hello, Alex.”

“Fuck!” Alex practically leaped off the bench. He spun around to find Yassen standing there as if he’d been there the whole time, with the slightest twitch of amusement around his mouth.

He glanced around to see if his outburst had attracted any attention, but the few people left scattered around the platform didn’t seem to have noticed anything. 

“I hope you weren’t waiting too long,” Yassen said. “Shall we go?”

_Go where?_ , Alex wanted to ask, but he just nodded and followed Yassen out of the station. He felt suddenly nervous - his heart was thudding in his ears and his palms were getting a little sweaty. For one frantic second, he wondered if he’d been poisoned. 

But he was with Yassen. And, god help him, for some reason that made him feel safe. 

Besides, if he was honest with himself, his reaction was nothing but the sight of Yassen here with him again, in the flesh. Alex watched him out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be so obvious about his staring. It had only been a month since their last meeting but somehow his memory never quite did Yassen justice - his voice, the minute expressions on his face that Alex was slowly learning to read, and the way he moved like a cat stalking prey. 

Alex could feel his thoughts moving into dangerous territory and moved himself on quickly. 

They’d only walked a short distance down the block before Yassen paused and turned to Alex again. “Are you sure you wanted to meet? You can leave if you like. If you’ve changed your mind, I won’t force you to stay with me.”

Caught off guard, Alex could only blink at him. “What?” 

“You seemed upset.”

“Oh.” Oh, god, this really was embarrassing. “No, I’m okay. Just had a long week, I guess.”

“Is that all?” The words were soft, not interrogatory or judgemental. 

“And… I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

Yassen’s face seemed to soften. “We had an agreement,” he said, “And you should know, Alex, I don’t dislike seeing you.”

Alex’s heart leaped oddly. That was as good as an outright declaration of affection from Yassen, he thought. Still, he couldn’t help his slightly cheeky response. “You might change your mind after hearing all the questions I’ve got. I won’t shut up.”

“I prefer that you ask me than try to investigate on your own,” Yassen said pointedly. 

Okay, Alex supposed that was a fair answer.

They finished the walk at a car - a different one than last time, of course, but also completely ordinary-looking - and Alex obediently got in at the sound of the door locks clicking open. It had occurred to him that Yassen might be kidnapping him for nefarious assassin reasons, but Alex doubted it. If Yassen had really wanted him dead or hurt, he would’ve done it years ago.

The drive was quiet, with only the low buzz of classical music breaking the silence. Alex wondered if it was just what happened to be on the radio, or if it was something Yassen genuinely liked. He’d never thought about what Yassen’s taste in music might be, but this seemed fitting enough, though the idea of Yassen secretly being a hardcore death metal fan made him smile inwardly.

They eventually stopped and Alex stepped out of the car to find himself at one of the many jetties dotting Sydney’s coastline. The water shone against the black nighttime sky with reflected lights from the city and the grand-looking boats moored all along the pier. 

“Wow,” Alex breathed, taking in the sight and the rich ocean air. “Where are we?”

“There’s something I want to show you,” Yassen said, nodding his head towards the line of boats. There was a soft smile on his lips. “It’s not far.”

“As long as you’re not showing me cement shoes at the bottom of the harbour,” Alex couldn’t help quipping, though he wandered back over to Yassen’s side and began walking with him anyway. For a moment he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing, but Yassen only gave him a mysterious sort of smile and kept walking.

When they arrived, what Alex saw took his breath away.

It was a beautiful, sleek, gleaming white yacht, with darkened windows and no name, smaller than some of the commercial passenger types around it, and certainly far smaller than the monster thing he’d seen Yassen with all those years ago, but no less luxurious. And there was no mistaking who it belonged to: Yassen was already standing at the boarding ramp, waiting for Alex to finish his gawking and join him.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. 

He didn’t know what to think. He’d calmed down on the walk and the drive over here, but this set his mind and heart racing again.

The last time the words _Yassen_ and _yacht_ had had any relation to Alex, a journalist’s house had exploded and Alex had tried to shoot the man who was standing in front of him right now. The memory of the cold gun metal, his shaking hands and Yassen’s unflappable calm flashed through his mind, and suddenly the icy ocean wind chilled him to his bones.

He’d been so close to killing Yassen on that boat. Taking revenge for Ian’s death. At least, that was what he’d thought at the time. But even back then, Yassen had taken one look at him and known he couldn’t do it.

He felt like he’d gotten a bucket of cold water to the face. 

“What happened to the old yacht, then?” he asked, surprising himself with the bitterness in his voice. “Cray wanted it back?”

“It was too recognisable,” Yassen said, matter-of-fact, but Alex could feel the scrutinising eyes on him. He realised that he’d taken Yassen off guard, throwing acidity at him instead of being all impressed or whatever it was Yassen had expected, and felt distantly like he should have been thrilled by it. But instead it made bile rise in the back of his throat.

Alex shook himself and tore his gaze away from the yacht. “I haven’t forgotten everything you’ve done, you know,” he said bluntly, though he wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Yassen or himself. “All the people you’ve hurt and the people you’ve --” _killed._ He stopped himself short, remembering just in time that they were still in public, though he doubted Yassen would have parked himself anywhere in view of the surveillance cameras.

“I hadn’t expected you to.” 

“So why did you bring me here?”

“You wanted to meet again. I assumed you wanted to be able to talk, and this seemed the safest place to do so.”

Alex couldn’t argue with that. 

“My previous offer still stands. If you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”

Alex swallowed hard and broke eye contact. He scuffed his shoes against the ground and crossed his arms, drawing the moment out longer before he finally answered. “No, I’ll stay.”

“Alright.” Yassen stepped onto the yacht and gestured for Alex to follow. “We’ll only sail out a bit further. We can talk. Then I’ll return you home.”

Alex could only nod. All the air went out of him at once. He suddenly felt like a child having a tantrum needing to be _managed_ , and wanted to kick himself. 

What was it about seeing the yacht that had set him off like that? Maybe it was the concrete reminder of exactly who Yassen had been. Maybe it was seeing in material form all the luxury and comfort that blood money from a job like Yassen’s could buy. That rush of anger and hate had hit him just as hard as it did the first time. 

But he didn’t hate Yassen any more, or else he wouldn’t be where he was now. He could admit that much to himself.

It was true he hadn’t forgotten that Yassen was a killer… but he hadn’t forgotten everything else that Yassen had now done for him too.

He followed Yassen on board and let himself be led to sit in the warm cabin of the yacht while Yassen left to start the engine. It was pretty obvious he was being put into time-out to settle down, like a child again. 

It wasn’t that he’d been unreasonable, but his outburst had definitely thoroughly erased all of the quiet peace that had built over their walk and the car trip. He could feel Yassen holding him at arm’s length again. And, for some utterly unfathomable reason, it… stung.

He covered his face with his hands and groaned.

\---

It took longer than Alex expected before Yassen returned. He hadn’t kept track of how far out they were - for all he knew, Yassen could’ve been sailing in circles - but he could at least still see the city lights in the distance.

Alex had nestled himself into a corner seat behind a table, keeping himself out of the way, partly out of embarrassment, when Yassen finally reappeared. He walked into the cabin and sat down opposite him without a word, and only looked at Alex with raised eyebrows, as if waiting for him to say something.

“Um… Thanks for bringing me here,” Alex mumbled, not sure what Yassen wanted to hear from him.

Yassen frowned at him, and he didn’t seem angry but the look was still intimidating. “You said you had questions. So you can ask them now, and then we can part ways.”

Alex’s heart sank. “You mean, that’s it? I’ve only got tonight, and then I’ll never see you again?”

“Yes,” Yassen said firmly. “It was a mistake to find you again after Cray. You don’t need the reminders of bad memories. I’ll answer what I can about your family, so that you will not need to see me again.”

It should’ve been exactly what Alex wanted - answers about the parents he’d never met, and the assurance that he’d never see someone he was supposed to hate ever again. He should’ve been over the moon.

But -- 

“No!” Alex blurted out, “No, that’s all wrong.” He reached for Yassen’s arm, and knew he was only able to hold on because Yassen let him. 

Yassen’s face was carefully blank now.

“Look, I --” Alex scrambled for the words. “I do want to hear about my parents, but that’s not the only reason I wanted to see you, alright?”

At any other time it would have been gratifying to see the slight puzzlement on Yassen’s face, but it only made Alex feel small and self-conscious.

He took a breath and went on. “Last time we met, I realised… There’s nobody else left who knows what happened. The teenage spy stuff, the death-defying stunts and all of that.” He forced a grin at his own flippant words but it felt empty. “Not even Jack knows all of it. But you do, don’t you? And it’s… it’s good to talk to you.”

“You want someone who remembers the same world you do,” Yassen nodded in understanding, though he didn’t look pleased about it. “This isn’t what I wished when I gave you your new identity.”

Alex bit his lip and looked away, feeling suddenly humiliated for baring his soul like that. “If _you_ don’t want us to meet any more, then that’s alright. I wouldn’t be able to stop you from disappearing, anyway.”

It was quiet for a few moments, no sound except the calm rhythm of water lapping at the yacht. Alex could feel Yassen thinking, but didn’t want to think about what conclusions he might draw.

Then - completely unexpectedly - Yassen leaned across, drew Alex into his arms, and for a second pressed his lips so softly to Alex’s forehead that Alex wondered if he’d imagined it.

“You are very much like your father in some ways, Alex,” Yassen said, voice gentler than he had ever heard it before, as he combed a hand over Alex’s hair, “And so very different in others.”

Alex sat back, stunned. Yassen only looked faintly - and warmly - amused.

Alex didn’t know what to say, at first. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. 

“You’re not angry at me?” he asked, a plaintive note slipping into his voice.

“No.” The look of faint amusement crossed Yassen’s face again.

“I’m sorry for freaking out. Before.”

“You are young and hot-tempered. Still uncontrolled. But I understand you won’t do it again,” Yassen said, making Alex blush with guilt. “And your anger wasn’t wrong.” 

“Okay.” Alex would take whatever concessions he was given.

“Now, I’ll tell you what you’d like to know. And if you’d like, our paths can cross again one day.”

\---

So they talked. Long into the night, in the silence of the bay, surrounded by the glittering lights of the city coastline. 

It was hours later when Alex, after some tears and being utterly wrung dry of emotion, drifted off to sleep in the corner seat he had curled himself on. 

When Yassen saw Alex was truly unconscious to the world, he stood from his chair and fetched a quilt from the linen cupboard. He tucked it gently around Alex’s now lightly snoring form and walked back out to the bow of the yacht, shutting the cabin door quietly behind him. It was time to make their way back to shore.

He hadn’t lied when he said Alex resembled his father. In appearance, yes. And in the way he - somehow, incomprehensibly, and against all of Yassen’s defences - had Yassen wrapped quite firmly around his little finger.


	4. Chapter 4

Alex had barely registered the time passing before it had already been almost a month since that evening on the yacht.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Any time his mind wandered, in classes, in the library, on the train, even waiting for the stove while making dinner… his thoughts returned to replaying their conversation over and over, picking it apart for any new scrap of detail or information. 

There was one image he always returned to. His mother and father at Sacré-Cœur. 

He remembered Yassen’s face as he described the scene, secretly following Hunter and witnessing that tender moment between a young family. The way his expression had softened, with affection and maybe - though Alex might have imagined it - a hint of longing. 

Yassen had looked almost the same way when he talked about Alex’s father - Hunter, as he was called those days - saving his life in the forest. It was bizarre to imagine a young Yassen anything less than perfect at his job, looking up to Hunter with stars in his eyes. Even more bizarre to realise that loyalty had lasted even beyond Hunter’s betrayal. Not that Alex would look a gift horse in the mouth. That enduring loyalty ( _or maybe more,_ said a whisper in the back of his mind with a hint of an emotion he couldn’t identify) had saved Alex’s life countless times already.

Alex had never thought of Yassen as a romantic. He had always seemed like an imposing, solitary, powerful figure, too cold and calculating for human foibles like that. But maybe retirement had changed him, or maybe Alex had grown up to see things in a new light. The world was more shades of grey these days. 

Or maybe it was some kind of belated Stockholm Syndrome. Some kind of misplaced nostalgia.

Alex sighed and turned over in his bed to face the ceiling, sheets shuffling around him as he moved. It was promising to be another long sleepless night, thoughts spinning in his head.

 _If you’d like, our paths can cross again someday,_ Yassen had said.

Alex wasn’t too proud to admit that he _would_ like it, very much. 

Yassen was the last tenuous link to his old life, the last reminder that everything that had happened to him was real. The last shred of evidence that the messy bundle of scar tissue on his leg had a story beyond the lies he told these days. 

There was another reason too, one which made him flush with embarrassed heat every time it crossed his mind. He pulled his pillow over his face and considered screaming into it. 

Part of him _liked_ Yassen.

It wasn’t new, Alex was self-aware enough to realise, but it was easier to admit to himself now. Especially after… everything he’d learnt. 

For so long, he’d held those thoughts at bay with the harsh fact of who Yassen was. A murderer, a killer for hire, the person who’d destroyed Alex’s old life - all those facts clamoured at the surface of his thoughts. He wasn’t forgetting that. He _wasn’t_. It felt impossible to think of anything else.

But now, things felt different. Now Alex knew - his own father had been the one to make Yassen who he was. All the unforgivable things Alex always told himself he should hate Yassen for, no matter how mellowed he seemed in his retirement… he couldn’t deny his dad must have done the same too, even as an undercover agent, to become so trusted at Scorpia. Yassen hadn’t spelled it out, but Alex was no longer trusting, patriotic, naive child he used to be. What did that mean about who they were?

The thought made humiliated tears prick at Alex’s eyes. Despite growing up with Ian, he’d always known more about his mum than his dad. It made sense in retrospect - mum was never a secret agent with a double life to hide. But he never realised exactly how little he knew about the golden figure of MI6 that was John Rider (hadn’t even known John Rider _was_ a golden figure of MI6), until now.

And there were other things he couldn’t deny. 

Yassen had saved his life, saved him not only from the maniac of the week on Air Force One but the inevitable end that MI6 was pushing him towards - either a messy death on some mission gone wrong where his luck finally ran out, or a slow and tortured decline as the child weapon they’d crafted inevitably rusted and tarnished. Alex was old enough to understand that now. And afterwards, Yassen had continued to look out for him and look after him, in his own strange way. Yassen cared for him.

Yassen was also, Alex thought with a helpless groan, very attractive.

Alex thought of that unexpected kiss on the yacht. Only to his hair, arguably only platonic and only to comfort, of course. 

But if he was honest with himself, he’d imagined that kiss over and over ever since, imagined it happening in other ways. Yassen drawing his face close. Alex taking the plunge first. Sometimes, when he dared, he imagined that their lips met. 

These thoughts usually happened in the blurry early hours of the morning or the tail-end of a late night, flashing as vague, jumbled and fantastical ideas. But there was no denying that they did happen.

Maybe it was hormones; god knew everyone his age seemed to be absolutely overflowing with hormones. Maybe it was some twisted psychological thing his brain had invented to cope with, well, pretty much everything. He didn’t know.

Whatever it was, now he suddenly found himself missing Yassen like mad.

He lingered on those thoughts half-guiltily for a while longer. The night stretched onwards.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed the duvet away and swung his legs over the side of the bed. What was he doing just dwelling on it pointlessly? Frankly, _doing_ had always come more naturally to him than _thinking_. So why didn’t he do what he’d been wanting to do this whole time anyway?

Moments later he was dressed in a soft hoodie and jeans with his feet shoved into old sneakers, keys in his hand. Scrunched into his pocket was a sheet of paper with one phone number and no name attached. One-time use only, he’d been warned.

The front door shut behind him with a quiet click and he stepped out onto the footpath. 

Half the streetlights on his street had been knocked out ages ago and never replaced by the council, leaving only a few odd patches glowing along the road. The sky was pitch black, hardly a single star visible against the light pollution of the city. Alex’s footsteps echoed in the silence. The blanket of quiet was a shock against the chaos his thoughts had been, tossing and turning for hours in the dark in his bedroom.

It became brighter and noisier as he approached the main road. Cars zoomed by and he could hear the occasional wild revving of engines somewhere farther away, someone obviously enjoying their night more than he was. 

After walking a few blocks, he reached the small line of shops that served the surrounding streets. A small liquor store, the post office, a few small two-dollar shops, hairdressers and an Asian grocery. Most of them were unsurprisingly shut at the ridiculously late - or, alternatively, ridiculously early - hour, except the 24-hour convenience store at the end of the street. And right outside that was what Alex was looking for: one of the few surviving payphones in the area.

He pulled a few coins out of his pocket, even though the phone had a card reader attached, and pushed them through the slot. There was something thrilling about pressing the little metal buttons in this day and age, and Alex couldn’t help smiling to himself as he dialed the number.

His pulse, which had calmed on the walk, ratcheted up again as he waited for the dial tone to end.

It seemed to go on forever, but finally there was a click on the other end.

“Alex.”

“Hi,” he answered. “I know it’s been a while.” When Yassen had given Alex the phone number, he’d also given him the freedom to choose when he was ready to talk, but Alex doubted either of them expected it would be quite this long. Or maybe Yassen _had_ expected it. He’d always seemed uncannily able to see through everything Alex did.

“Is everything alright?” To Alex’s surprise, Yassen sounded almost wary.

He paused, suddenly hesitant. “Yeah, of course. I just… wanted to talk again, like we said.”

“It’s an odd hour for that,” Yassen said slowly. 

Alex could have smacked himself. Instead he sighed heavily through his nose and bumped his head a few times against the plastic frame of the payphone. He should have realised. An unexpected phone call at three in the morning usually spelled trouble, some kind of emergency, not a casual chat to catch up. 

“Ugh, I’m an idiot,” he groaned, “Sorry. I really am alright, I just couldn’t sleep. You weren’t busy, were you? Or sleeping? I can call back later. Oh, but - you’ll probably have to give me a new number, I guess this one won’t work again.”

Now Yassen sounded amused. “It’s fine. I know you can be a night owl.”

Alex was definitely not going to examine how Yassen knew that.

“Still, sorry.” He scuffed his shoe against the rough-hewn cement at the base of the payphone. “I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking. Nothing bad, just... You know, last time was kind of a heavy conversation.”

“Of course.” Yassen’s voice was reassuring in his ear. “But given your call, I assume you’d like us to meet again?”

“Yeah,” Alex breathed, feeling oddly relieved. “That would be -- yeah, that would be great.”

A minute later, he hung up the phone, with a tiny warmth in his chest and a new spring to his step. He already knew he’d sleep better that night.

\---

It took a few days for Yassen to reappear in Alex’s life after the call. Alex had expected it; he didn’t know what occupied most of Yassen’s time these days, but he doubted that Yassen spent all of it in Australia hovering over him. 

That morning he received a text from a deleted number directing him to a table at a local cafe, which he dutifully followed. 

It was a fashionably decorated place with charming rustic trimmings, so completely different to everything Alex expected of Yassen. He laughed inwardly at the mental image of Yassen in his usual dark plain clothes sitting at one of the little sun-bleached orange tables outside, like a single gloomy stormcloud in an obnoxiously clear blue sky. 

He made his way over to the table, which was a booth tucked away in a private corner towards the back. 

To his surprise, Yassen wasn’t wearing his regular attention-minimising grey-on-black-on-grey after all. He was dressed in a perfectly fitted white and blue shirt and a light jacket, looking like he completely belonged among the fashionable business-casual office workers on their coffee breaks filling the rest of the cafe. Alex would have walked right past him if he hadn’t been looking for the table numbers. He’d never seen Yassen looking so… normal, so casual and approachable. It really was a flawless disguise, hidden in plain sight. And it looked _good_.

Alex’s step stuttered for a second at the sight of him, and he stumbled just the slightest bit as he slid into the seat opposite him. He’d thought he’d been pretty smooth at catching himself, but the amused glint in Yassen’s eyes told him he hadn’t quite been successful. 

Alex couldn’t help the silly wide grin that came to his face. “It’s really good to see you,” he said, feeling a bit giddy. Yassen was more composed but returned the smile, which only made Alex grin wider.

“It’s good to see you too,” Yassen said coolly as he passed one of the menus from the end of the table to Alex. “You’re in a cheerful mood today.”

“Suppose so,” Alex nodded as he browsed the pages, drawn in by the mouth-watering descriptions and feeling hungrier by the minute. It helped that his morning run had worked up an appetite too. “Oh yum, this stuff looks delish. Have you been here before? What do you want to have?”

Yassen answered something that sounded flawlessly Italian, which Alex’s less-fluent ear didn’t quite catch. Alex flipped through the menu eagerly to find it, curious to examine Yassen’s food tastes - it was still a novelty to learn any little scrap about this mysterious figure’s life.

He was still skimming through the menu when he accidentally caught Yassen’s eye over the top of the page. Yassen had been watching him with a gently indulgent air. Alex suddenly felt self-conscious under the attention and opened his mouth to stammer something sheepish.

Luckily - or unluckily - they were interrupted before he could say anything.

“Alex! Fancy seeing you here!” a bright voice chirped. It was Diana, dressed in the cafe’s plain apron uniform, her long dark hair piled into a messy bun on her head. She beamed at him and pulled him into a half-hug in greeting, then pulled away to glance between the pair of them. “Who’s this?”

“Oh!” Alex babbled haltingly, “This is, um, wow - I didn’t know you were working here!” 

He felt an instinctive stab of fear that Yassen might do something drastic, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. This was just brunch ( _brunch with Yassen_ , his mind echoed, still stunned by the idea of those two concepts clashing), not some top-secret mission with lives on the line. He was retired; he was supposed to be an average, ordinary boy now, wasn’t he? And Yassen wouldn’t have arranged a meeting somewhere so public if it was a security issue. Alex knew him well enough to know that much.

Still, his mind spun in a panic. He hadn’t answered Diana’s question yet. Shit, Yassen hadn’t given him a cover name. What should he say? Was it alright that they were being seen together?

Thank God, Yassen stepped in, graceful as ever. “Joshua,” he introduced himself as he shook hands with Diana, apparently oblivious to Alex’s heart pounding in his ears, “It’s nice to meet you.” 

“Nice to meet you too! I’m Diana, I’m just a friend from uni,” Diana said cheerily. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch date, I just wanted to say hello. How about I take your order and leave you guys to it?” 

(Lunch date? The words reverberated in Alex’s mind like a broken record. _Lunch date?_ ) 

They exchanged a few more brief pleasantries, Yassen a total gentleman while Alex fumbled his words like a fish flapping on dry ground. Diana scribbled down their order and turned away to report back to the cooks, but not before giving Alex a mischievous wink that told him _exactly_ what she thought was going on with him and ‘Joshua’.

After she was gone, Alex put his face in his hands. He wanted to sink through the floor. “I am so sorry,” he groaned, “Oh my god. She thinks we’re on a date. Look, just let me know whatever cover story you have and I can clear things up with her later.” There was no way Yassen would want to be seen that way with Alex, or get mixed up in his and his friends’ childish gossip. 

“It’s fine,” Yassen shrugged. 

Amazed, Alex peeked through his fingers to search Yassen’s face. “Really?”

“As long as you’re not unhappy that she’s met me, it’s no problem to me.”

“Why would I be unhappy about that?”

Yassen looked at him as if it should’ve been obvious. “I thought you wanted an ordinary life, far away from your past. That might not be so easy if your new friends know about this old reminder.”

“So I’ll just, what, sneak around and keep you secret from everyone? No!” Alex boggled. Yassen was an actual person, and importantly, someone Alex had decided he wanted in his life for as long as Yassen would have him - not some ornament he could hide in a box in the garage. 

Then he sighed and looked down into his glass of water. “And the whole ‘normal life’ thing… I don’t know. I think I’m kind of past hoping for that. All the stuff that came before, you know… It’s always going to be part of me.” 

Whether he liked it or not, there was no escaping that truth. The incident at the ski trip had proven that, and so had countless other little things in his life that popped up whenever he least expected it - details he noticed while other people didn’t, odd anxieties that seemed to appear out of nowhere, the eccentric mix of both precautions reckless risks that he would take in equal portions. His friends were great and they didn’t mind it one bit, even if they didn’t completely understand it; they just found it funny and quirky, the things that made Alex _Alex_ to them. Alex was making peace with that.

Besides, not everything about his old life was completely bad, he thought tentatively. He was okay with keeping some parts of it. Like the man sitting across from him right now.

“I don’t want to keep any more secrets than I already have to,” Alex said under Yassen’s assessing gaze, trying to choose his words carefully. “I know there’s still a lot that other people can’t find out about, about us. But if you can be in my life, I don’t want to treat you like some kind of skeleton in my cupboard.”

Yassen’s face was unreadable, and suddenly Alex flushed at how earnest he had sounded. He scrambled to cover it. “I mean, as long as you’re alright with it too, obviously. I’d understand if you’d rather keep it on the down-low between us. Like, security reasons or safety reasons, or whatever. Or even if you just find me embarrassing, to be honest.” 

At that, Yassen chuckled. “I don’t find you embarrassing, Alex.”

“Thanks,” Alex said dryly, though he felt a weight lift from his chest. 

Diana chose that moment to arrive with their food. She didn’t linger long, but she must have seen something in the expression on Alex’s face, because her eyebrows twitched upwards at him and that cheeky delighted smile returned. She even gave Alex an encouraging thumbs-up when she probably thought Yassen wasn’t paying attention, although it was _guaranteed_ that Yassen noticed it anyway. Alex felt his face tint red.

Diana was going to be unbearable the next time they spoke, he already knew it. She already thought he had a _thing_ for older guys, after discovering his hopeless crush on one of their lecturers last semester. He cringed at the thought. 

It was somehow reassuring that, in between all the chaos of navigating this new thing with Yassen and juggling past ghosts with his new life, at least there had always been one constant: his love life was still an unmitigated disaster.

Not that this had anything to do with his love life, he reminded himself firmly.

They ate in silence for a while, Alex digging into his food with some ferocity, partly to distract himself from that line of thought and partly out of plain hunger - his stomach had already threatened to growl at some mortifying inopportune moment.

Yassen spoke first, and the seriousness in his voice made Alex sit up straight. “There’s something else you should know, if you’re determined that we keep meeting. It’s nothing dangerous, but I thought you might be more comfortable discussing it somewhere public.”

Alex frowned, puzzled. What on earth could it be about? 

For the first time ever, Alex thought Yassen looked… hesitant. It made Alex nervous, and he put down his cutlery and folded his arms. 

“Okay,” he said slowly, unsure if this was something he wanted to hear after all. “What is it?”

Yassen looked thoughtful for a moment. “I told you before that I cared about your welfare as a debt to your father.”

Alex nodded. 

“It’s true, but it isn’t the only reason,” Yassen said. He paused and held Alex’s eyes, as Alex’s heart thudded in his chest. “I love you, Alex.”

Alex’s jaw dropped open. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear, but it wasn’t that. The words ‘I love you’ had never crossed his mind. But all of a sudden, they just seemed to fall into place, fitting in spaces he hadn’t even known were empty.

“You -- I -- do you mean that?” Alex stuttered. His mind had gone completely blank, as if a trapdoor had opened in his skull and every single thought simply fell out.

“Yes,” he answered coolly. Despite the weight of the conversation, he seemed completely unflustered. “So, you understand, my reasons for all our meetings haven’t been completely unselfish. But now that we’re out of other excuses to keep in contact, I thought you should know. Then you might reconsider whether you still want to meet.”

“What? Of course I do!” Alex let out a slightly hysterical giggle. Yassen seemed to ask that question every time they met, maybe expecting Alex to finally come to his senses and realise that going on countless definitely-not-dates with a former assassin was an utterly insane thing to continue doing. 

“It’s your decision,” Yassen said. “I won’t pressure you either way. And I don’t want you to think there’s any obligation for you to reciprocate.”

Alex knew he meant that. All this time, with everything Yassen had done for him since that unbelievable day on Air Force One, he’d never once felt like there was a bill to repay or favours to return. Even today, they were here in an open cafe in the most unthreatening setting possible - with plenty of exits and escape routes, and even makeshift distractions and weapons if he was desperate, Alex’s hypervigilant gut instincts had automatically noted when he first sat down.

This was probably the time to open up about his own feelings, Alex thought. He chewed his lip, infinitely more nervous than Yassen had seemed. 

“I should tell you something too,” he began. “You’re not the only one who’s been thinking about this stuff. Ever since we talked last time, I… I guess I realised some things. You have to know I don’t hate you for what you’ve done, right? Maybe I did once, or I still should, I don’t know - but I don’t. I…”

The words were coming out all wrong. Who started a confession with ‘I don’t hate you’? Alex sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. 

"I'm just trying to say: I think I love you too." 

That made Yassen break into a smile - a true smile. It looked good on him, Alex thought giddily.

There was silence between them for a moment. Suddenly another hysterical bubble of laughter burst from Alex’s chest. "God, Diana was right, wasn't she? We've been dating this whole time."

Yassen laughed at that too. With the tension broken, they continued eating and the conversation drifted. Alex felt dizzy, almost lightheaded, like a huge weight had been lifted that he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying. Maybe he was imagining it, but Yassen seemed lighter too. Quicker to smile. Happier too, Alex hoped.

Later, the bright sun shone down on them as they walked away from the cafe together, Alex hooking his arm playfully around Yassen’s, while Yassen gave him a faint, fond smile. The future seemed to stretch out limitless in front of them. Finally, it felt like everything fit together.


End file.
